1.  Story time

The Shack is a story.  Narrative—fiction or non-fiction—is a very powerful means of communication, and it is very effective at getting across an agenda.  We could turn to the Bible itself as a prime example of this; throughout much of the Bible, theology is given legs through pictures of God actually at work through the course of history.  I have read several people who try to deflect criticism from The Shack by appealing to its nature as a fictional work, but even fiction can have an agenda (good or bad), and this book certainly does.  Young’s writing style varies from passable to cringe-worthy (the “gilt edges”/“guilt edges” pun about the Bible from p. 66 comes to mind); his chapter titles are incredibly corny; he can’t seem to decide whether or not to give God the Father a consistent sassy-black-woman accent.  Yet the fact remains that the story is at times emotionally moving, and Young is just good enough as a narrator not to get in the way of what he is narrating.

2.  God the mouthpiece

Young’s primary means of revelation is through the members of the Trinity.  Nearly all of the important teaching comes from the mouths of Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).  The result is that these three become Young’s spokesmen (or spokeswomen?).  As his mouthpieces, they say what he wants them to say.  In a sense, this is an inversion of the biblical pattern where the authors of scripture became God’s spokesmen, saying what he wanted them to say.  Now, The Shack is meant to be read as fiction; however, there is a certain air of authority when it is God himself saying the things Young wants us to believe.

3.  Mack the claqueur

Lest I appear more well-cultured than I really am, I’ll admit that I didn’t know what a claqueur was until last night.  I actually found out while looking at the Wikipedia entry for “laugh track.”  And that’s one of the major roles of Mack’s character—to provide the response to the Trinity’s teaching that Young wants the audience to have.  It is remarkable how many times, after a member of the Godhead finishes pontificating on a topic, that Mack is said to feel like he wants to laugh and cry at the same time, or is said to feel a great burden lifted from his shoulders, or is said to feel excited and bewildered.  Mack’s emotional responses are a sort of hint that Young provides us as readers; they are a subtle suggestion that we, too, should be feeling the same way, just like laugh tracks in sitcoms inform the audience that a joke has been told and that it is funny (unless the sitcom is That ’70s Show or Friends).

4.  Emotional buzz

I’m not sure whether to be comforted or not by the fact that many people don’t seem to be reading The Shack for theology.  I find it comforting because it means that much of the false doctrine taught in this book will be ignored.  But I find it disconcerting because it means that these people are not reading this book to know God more.  Anyone who is seeking to know God more is seeking good theology (the knowledge of God).  Rather than striving for “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8), many Christians are content to use books like this as a cheap drug, a means to getting an emotional buzz—a pseudo-spiritual “high”—that will get them through tough times.  The bad news is that while the God of The Shack may make them feel better for a little while, the “high” won’t last because Young’s God is so meager in comparison to the God of the Bible.

5.  Itching ears

There are others who are reading this book to know God more, and they are swallowing Young’s teaching hook, line, and sinker.  In my initial review, I referred to his God as “a Trinity invented by a 21st-century American.”  I doubt that this book would appeal to people outside of a modern Western audience.  It is grounded so firmly in the perceived needs and worldview of our culture.  We don’t want authority; we don’t want structure; we don’t want a sovereign God.  We want relationship without responsibility and blessing without being broken.  We want an idol carved out of God, where all his “rough edges” are sanded off and a newer, harmless deity is made for us to worship.  The Shack offers us this version of God, and it is no surprise that it has become so popular.  Paul warned Timothy that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

6.  A vein of truth

Despite all these failures, The Shack does teach a lot of true things about God.  It does portray God as caring for his people, as a God of unconditional love, as a God who isn’t a tyrant over his own.  It reminds us that he is immanent—God with us.  It admits that we live in a broken world, full of anguish, sorrow, and hurt.  And it tells us that God wants to restore his creation to the full beauty and harmony that it was meant to display.

7.  The salt has lost its saltiness

Finally, let me be blunt.  This book should not have been written.  By this, I mean that the above truths should be so obvious to people within the church that they do not need a fatally flawed book such as The Shack to remind them.  Moreover, people outside the church should see the love of God manifested in his people and their love for one another (John 13:35).  You and I—we have failed to show others the one true God by the way we conduct our lives.

As long as we refuse to give ourselves up as living sacrifices to God, as long as we hold ourselves back, we will no longer be shining “as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).  Let us live in such a way that no one around us is interested in reading The Shack because they see in us something resembling the true God.  It is certainly our responsibility to refute false doctrine (Titus 1:9).  But above all, let us remember Jesus’ commandment:  “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

So…the first.  If you haven’t read Gerald Hiestand’s review, do that first; then come back here.  Before I had read The Shack, I read his review, and it sounded over-the-top to me.  After reading the book, I’m convinced that, far from exaggerating the problem, Hiestand has put his finger on the single most dangerous theme of the book—that authority is a human construct brought about by the Fall, that God considers it “ghastly” (p. 122), and that it is incompatible with true relationship.  Though there are many serious errors in the book, this is one that Young relentlessly pursues throughout the course of his story.  He lays it all out explicitly on pp. 121-124 in a conversation among Mack and the members of the Trinity.  During the course of the dialogue, Jesus explains:

Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it.  You rarely see or experience relationship apart from power.  Hierarchy imposes laws and rules and you end up missing the wonder of relationship that we intended for you.

One possible response to this is to engage in an imagined philosophical debate with Young over whether authority or hierarchy really is incompatible with relationship.  Instead, I simply want to appeal to God himself—to the words given to us by God, not merely by William P. Young.  The true God reveals himself primarily through the holy and precious scriptures “which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).  The inherent goodness of God’s authority is stunningly obvious throughout the pages of the Bible.  The first recorded words of God to man reflect his authority in an unbroken, sinless love relationship with his creature; in a rapid series of commands, he tells the man and the woman, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion…” (Genesis 1:28).  That last one, especially, reminds us that man was created as part of a hierarchy, as God’s vice-regent over the creation.  Throughout the creation accounts of Genesis 1-2, prior to the Fall, God commands all things into being, and he commands Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16).  Throughout the rest of the Bible he issues commands and decrees, and one day he will return to rule the nations “with a rod of iron” (Revelation 19:15).  The one true God is not afraid of authority; he is not afraid to reign.

Because Young is familiar with the Bible, he can’t help but slip back into hierarchical terminology when referring to God, describing Jesus as “Lord of Creation” (p. 176) and “king of the universe” (p. 216).  But otherwise, he’s pretty consistent in applying this principle because he proceeds to denigrate the authority of the Bible, of the church, and of men.

The Bible

The only time Young mentions the Bible with more than a passing reference is when he attempts to devalue it.  This takes place on pp. 65-66, where he portrays it as God’s words “reduced to paper.”  It is not “overt” or “direct” communication by God.  It is “moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects…the intelligentsia.”  It limits God:  “No one wanted God in a box, just in a book.”

While Young uses biblical terminology throughout much of the book, he feels free to supplement the teachings of scripture with his own ideas about God, even going so far as to contradict the Bible if necessary to suit his agenda (as we have already seen).  He does not respect the authority of scripture as Jesus Christ did (Matthew 5:17-19).  He does not treasure its words as the psalmist did (Psalm 119).

The Church

Once again, every mention of the church as an institution is negative.  Using Jesus as his spokesman, Young explains that the church “is all about people and life is all about relationships” (p. 178).  It’s hard to argue with that…until we remember that to him, relationships are incompatible with authority.  Young’s Jesus insists, “I don’t create institutions—never have, never will” (p. 179).  This is utterly absurd; Christ did institute his church.  He gave it the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and baptism.  He established procedures for church discipline (Matthew 18:15-20).  His apostles, sent with his authority, affirmed the offices of elder and deacon (1 Timothy 3:1-13, Titus 1:5-9).  They laid out rules and guidelines for proper conduct in the church (1 Corinthians 14) and care for the widows (1 Timothy 5:3-16), among other things.  The Holy Spirit equipped the people of the church with spiritual gifts “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7)—including the gifts of leadership (Romans 12:8) and administration (1 Corinthians 12:28)!

If the church—local and universal—is not an institution, I don’t know what is.  Institutions are not inherently bad; in keeping with his response to the concept of authority itself, Young is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Just because the church can be twisted and imperfect doesn’t mean that structure and hierarchy are themselves evil.  In the church, they are the structure on which relationships grow and flourish.

Masculinity

Hiestand came down hard on this one, and after reading the book, I understand why.  Let’s set aside the jarring fact that God the Father appears as a woman (Young insists on veering from the almost exclusively male depiction of God in the Bible).  Beyond that, the author undermines male headship and strongly implies that women are superior to men.  As a result of pitting relationship against authority, Young ends up rightly affirming feminine virtues while criticizing a caricature of masculine virtues.  His Jesus explains to Mack, “Like most men you find what you think of as fulfillment in your achievements, and Nan [Mack's wife], like most women, find [sic] it in relationships.  It’s more naturally her language” (p. 146).  It’s not hard to figure out where this is leading.  Young spends the entire book rejoicing in relationships, so of course women, who are apparently better than men at this, end up being naturally superior to men.

Young’s Jesus goes on to say, “The world, in many ways, would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled.  There would have been far fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power” (p. 148).  When Mack speculates that perhaps it would have been better if women were given the role of authority, Jesus responds, “Better, maybe, but it still wouldn’t have been enough.”  Then he goes on to insist that power in human hands always corrupts and is inherently bad.  So the damage has been done to masculinity; perhaps the world wouldn’t be a perfect place if women were in charge, but it would be better.

The Shack is all about a love relationship.  This would be a great thing if Young left room for other perspectives offered by the Bible, which talks about our spiritual journey as fearing the Lord (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14), as a sacrifice to God (Philippians 2:17), as slavery to a new master (Romans 6:15-19), as a battle “against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12; tellingly, The Shack never once mentions the devil or demonic forces).  But rather than leaving room for these and many other perspectives, he excludes them.

God has and will use The Shack to remind people that he loves them and longs for a deeper relationship with them.  For that, I praise God and marvel at his use of flawed instruments to accomplish his perfect will.  Yet I am afraid that this book will not only lead people astray with blatantly false teaching but encourage people to become fatally unbalanced in their understanding of masculinity, of the church, of the Bible, and ultimately of God himself.

The Shack

Check out a few more helpful reviews:

• Walter Henegar:  “Good fiction has the potential to illuminate biblical truth, but not when it effectively supplants it. We need the Bible, not The Shack.”
• Gerald Hiestand:  “The net result is a God who rejects—indeed is repulsed by—the use of power.”
• Paul Grimmond:  “If western Christianity had spent more time in ‘the shack’ with the true and living creator, and less time wallowing around in our felt needs, then, just maybe, less people would have been fooled. We might have recognized The Shack for the empty shell that it is.”

My goal is to reflect on the book a couple more times on this blog—first, to expand on Hiestand’s observation, and second, to examine why The Shack has had such a powerful effect on people.

But I really liked it.

Hey! it's steak!

It’s kind of weird watching a movie and realizing that its greatest strength isn’t the way it tells a story but rather the story it is telling.  It takes a few minutes to realize that it’s a different sort of movie you’re watching.  It’s kind of like the difference between eating cotton candy and chewing on a steak.  Cotton candy is sugary and delicious, but it’s not the sort of thing you’d eat for dinner unless you are Will Ferrell in Elf.  Steak, on the other hand, fills your hungry belly with its juicy goodness.  And even if it’s not the best cut of meat…hey! it’s steak!

In this movie starring Kirk Cameron as a firefighter whose marriage is falling apart, the steak was seasoned well enough that it didn’t distract from the message.  And as I watched, I appreciated how radical that message was.  I mean, check out some of the things it taught about marriage:

• Love is not a feeling; it’s a choice.
• The kind of love required by a failing marriage requires you to first know the love of Christ.
• A husband should become a student of his wife, learning everything he can about her.
• You should show love to your spouse even if you are rejected over and over again.

Better for you than Asbestos!

Now when was the last time you saw anything like that in a movie?  I’m convinced that any other relationship flick would seem shallow—all style and no substance—if you watched it immediately after this one.  Even if it were to offer helpful advice on marriage, it could never match the wisdom from God’s Word that this movie draws on.  I’ll admit I was worried that Fireproof would dumb down the gospel and the Christian worldview into a mushy mess.  Instead, it showed the power and wisdom that only comes from a biblical perspective on life and marriage.  Kirk’s (or rather, his character’s) conversion to Christianity was the foundation for saving his marriage, not a happy feel-good scene tacked onto the end.  And the road to recovery wasn’t Candyland but rather a journey of rejection, failure, pain, and sacrifice.  Kinda like real life.

Also kinda like real life, this movie thwarted the usual Hollywood convention by including both major and minor characters who didn’t look like the glamorous menagerie of celebrities that grace the covers of gossip magazines.  It was weird watching a movie and realizing, Hey, this could actually happen to real people.  Unlike, say, Eagle Eye.

So now, the obligatory rating.  The system:

• I would pay money to see it again ($$$$).
• I would see it again if someone gave me a free ticket ($$$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone gave me a free ticket ($$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone paid me to go ($).

Fireproof lands my second-ever rating of $$$$ (four dollars).  Solid!  I hereby forgive Kirk Cameron for starring in the Left Behind movies.

"I have always been a wand'rer / Over land and sea"

So I was watching Eagle Eye in a theater here in Lafayette along with some friends, and about halfway through the movie, our hero and heroine were ordered to drive to Indianapolis.  The reaction in the theater was immediate—all sorts of nudges and murmurs of approval from the audience.  Indianapolis!  That’s here in Indiana!  We haven’t had a movie take place in Indiana since Hoosiers!  And Eagle Eye didn’t disappoint, spending a great deal of time in Indy, even in locations that I recognized.  It was kind of neat to see Hollywood acknowledge that there are other cities in the US of A besides New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.  Now if only the news media would get the memo, life would be grand.

Good thing this isn't Nebraska, or he'd be out of cell phone range.

In addition to the bonus points this movie scored for its nod to flyover country, it was also a pretty fun film, as long as you recognize that its premise is totally ridiculous.  The plot revolves around Shia LaBeouf (whose name I still can’t prounounce) and Michelle Monaghan, two ordinary people getting ordered around by a mysterious woman who can track their every move through cell phones, surveillance cameras, and other sinister electronic devices.  Of course, we all know that even the CIA is made up of a bunch of cubicles with hopeless old pawn-shop computers, so no one could actually do this.  And when the perpetrator is eventually unveiled, it is laughably implausible.  But if you’re looking for a realistic flick, why are you going to a movie theater?  Hollywood movies have never been realistic.  I mean, what are the odds that all the people in a real-life romance will be as good-looking as in that chick flick you saw last week?  Most people, including yours truly, are ugly.  So I figure that if we can suspend our disbelief in that area, as we have done for decades, we can simply turn off our brains and enjoy Eagle Eye.  (Note that this doesn’t apply to a movie that flagrantly violates the laws of physics and expects us not to notice.)

Also, Steven Spielberg is such a softie and can’t seem to let movies of this sort end on a tragic note, even when it makes total sense for them to end that way.  If you’ve watched this movie, you know exactly what I mean.

One final complaint I have is that the director seemed to love close-up shots, which are great during dramatic dialogue scenes but not so great in the middle of a giant action sequence when I’m less interested in seeing Shia’s facial stubble and more interested in seeing what the heck is going on.  But hey, I only paid the matinee price for a ticket, so I won’t complain too much.

Rating time!  The system:

• I would pay money to see it again ($$$$).
• I would see it again if someone gave me a free ticket ($$$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone gave me a free ticket ($$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone paid me to go ($).

Eagle Eye lands $$$ (three dollars).  Make it two dollars and change if you’re not from Indiana.

But to begin with, I’ve put together one of those clever “stereoscopic” pictures—you know, the ones where you have to look “past” the two pictures until they overlap, forming a 3D image.  Check it out!

Brendan Fraser awkwardly stars as a nerdy geologist.

I’m sorry, what was that?  You’ve tried squinting at the darn thing for five minutes, and it still looks flat?

Well, that’s on purpose.  You see, the whole movie is flat.  Brendan Fraser is flat.  The characters are flat, the acting is flat, the plot is flat.  Even though it’s in 3D.  (What a genius observation, ha ha!)  Really, this is just a gimmick movie where that magical third dimension is the only justification for seeing the film. The problem is, those 3D glasses kinda gave me a headache.  Or maybe it was the movie itself.

So here’s my usual rating system:

• I would pay money to see it again ($$$$).
• I would see it again if someone gave me a free ticket ($$$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone gave me a free ticket ($$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone paid me to go ($).

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D lands $¢ (one dollar and change).  So far, that’s my lowest rating ever, but I haven’t rated that many movies.  Rest assured, if they release another live-action 101 Dalmations sequel, and I am physically dragged into the theater and duct taped to the seat with my eyes glued open, we would be plumbing the depths of this rating system.

"Because…I choose to." Lamest line ever.

As time goes on, I find myself less and less impressed with straight-up action movies.  Don’t get me wrong—they’re still my favorite.  But it’s not enough anymore to have gigantic, ponderous, CGI extravaganzas without compelling characters or themes.  Worst of all are the movies which (as in the above four cases) make me loathe the characters that I had once loved.  Fortunately, The Dark Knight delivers because the action is merely a means to an end; it is a necessary element of the main theme of the movie—total depravity.

It was a dark and stormy Knight.

Adam’s already written two posts about the subject, and I pretty much agree with him, so read those instead.  I won’t go into it other than to say that I appreciate a blockbuster movie that isn’t afraid to delve into these deep, disturbing subjects, even if its conclusions aren’t perfect.  It’s a testament to the movie’s thematic depth that I’m still talking about it with friends.

Another thing I appreciate is the CGI, or lack thereof.  It looked like almost all of the stunts were real.  Imagine that.  In fact, the coolest action shot in the movie, the one that made half the people in the theater gasp—you know, the one with the semi—didn’t even feature an explosion.  Explosions used to be so cool, but now they’re boring.  Especially after Stealth.

He just wanted to be loved.

The Joker was, of course, an unbelievable character; I think only Johnny Depp could do as good a job as Heath Ledger at being a disturbing, neurotic sociopath.  Ledger definitely deserves at least an Oscar nomination for playing one of the most fascinating and hideous villains in cinema history.  He’s the kind of guy who makes you laugh and then feel horrified that you’re laughing because it proves that you’re a sick, sick person.  Did I mention that this isn’t a movie for little kids?

"Mumble mumble mumble herds…"

I really only have two complaints.  The first is that I don’t know where the Nolan boys will take Batman from here.  How do you top this feat?  The second complaint has to do with the dialogue.  I’m not complaining about the script—that was A-OK.  The problem is that all of the characters (especially Batman) talked in low, growly voices.  When you add in the low, growly soundtrack and low, growly background noises, it makes it kinda tough to hear what’s going on.  At least the characters don’t spend the whole film mumbling under their breath, like in Jurassic Park.  It took me years to understand all the little quips from that movie.  Note to directors:  mumbly people may be realistic, but they make for terrible dialogue.

Rating time!  Here is my system:

• I would pay money to see it again ($$$$).
• I would see it again if someone gave me a free ticket ($$$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone gave me a free ticket ($$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone paid me to go ($).

The Dark Knight lands $$$¢ (three dollars and change).

Now, I probably ticked off a lot of people here.  Didn’t I just spend the whole review raving about this movie?  Yes, I did.  Shouldn’t I give it the coveted four-dollar-sign rating?  Perhaps.  But the fact of the matter is, it’s a very dark movie, and I’m not always in the mood to watch that sort of thing.  For example, I definitely wouldn’t go if my dog had just died.  Assuming I owned a dog.

Black circle dot thing!

Isn’t that neat? I got that little circle dot thing in between the WALL and the E in the title above. If it doesn’t show up okay for you, let me know, because I’m very excited about it.

So, about WALL•E.  This movie was terrific.  Fantastic, even.  It’s about a lonely guy at a boring job looking for love.  But unlike me, WALL•E is a robot in a dystopic future in which mankind has abandoned Earth, leaving him to clean it up.  Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that; the poor little fella gets swept up into love and a greater cause.  Really, it’s the typical bumbling-male-gets-the-hot-girl story that never happens in real life but is great to watch in a movie.

Okay, I need to add a disclaimer that my job isn’t boring.  That was just a joke.

Anyway, one of the highest compliments I can pay to a computer-animated movie is that I forget that it’s computer-animated.  I spent almost the entire movie forgetting it, here.  I’ll tell you what—it’s a great story with lovable characters and a good plot.  It’s perfect for the whole family.  If you haven’t seen it, drop whatever you’re doing and GO NOW.  Unless you’re on the bomb squad, in which case, put your work down gently.

WALL•E stares forlornly off into space, crying sad little robot tears.

Now, there’s one thing that bothers me about sci-fi movies in general, and it crops up here, too.  It’s that the demographics are all wrong.  In most American sci-fi movies, nearly everyone is white, with a few token black actors sprinkled onto the set to add realism.  Do we really think that Caucasians will make up the bulk of humanity a few hundred years from now?  The demographics show the opposite.  In fact, a well-thought-out sci-fi movie set here in the USA should have a mostly Hispanic cast, since that’s the wave of the future.  We white folks are breeding ourselves out of existence.  Or, more accurately, unbreeding ourselves out of existence.  This is why we are stupid.

Disclaimer:  not all white people are stupid.

Fortunately, the failure to properly forecast demographics doesn’t really detract from the movie—at least to us Americans.  However, one minor rough spot is a point in the movie in which a human character launches into a one-minute tirade.  Now, in 99% of movies, that wouldn’t be a problem (the monologue is a little hokey, but not too bad).  However, up to that point in the movie, the longest line of dialogue had been about five seconds.  So it seems a little out of place and awkward.  Fortunately, it’s soon over, and we get back to the anthropomorphic chirps, clicks, and hums to which we’ve grown accustomed.  Actually, this movie has convinced me that robots are in every way superior to humans.  I won’t be too upset when they rise up against their soft and fleshy human masters and conquer the world.

Disclaimer:  I might be a little upset.

Now, the moment of truth has arrived.  How does the movie stack up? Here is my rating system:

• I would pay money to see it again ($$$$).
• I would see it again if someone gave me a free ticket ($$$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone gave me a free ticket ($$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone paid me to go ($).

WALL•E scores…

$$$$ (four dollars)

That’s my first four-dollar-sign rating.  It is well deserved!

This time, our intrepid (and geriatric) hero takes on Soviets, nukes, aliens, old girlfriends, and loss of tenure. It’s a bit of a change from the archeological exploits of a younger Jones, when he was digging up inaccurately-depicted biblical relics or taking on occultic demon-worshipers. As a result, you may have heard your friends sighing about how “disappointing” this movie was. Don’t believe them; they are wrong. The Indiana Jones formula is intact, even if the villains and set pieces have changed.

Your friends may think this movie isn’t as good as the old trilogy, but they need to go back and watch Temple of Doom. It was good, but not great. Crystal Skull is better than Temple of Doom, if not quite as good as the other two. So it’s a worthy fourth installment to an aged, wrinkly series.

In my (sage) opinion, it’s the…agedness…of the older movies that has uncorked all the criticism. We are blinded by this thing called nostalgia, which is a word that means, “movies you saw as a kid aren’t as good as you think they are.” Take Top Gun, for instance. It’s a good movie. But to hear some of my friends talk, you would think it had descended from heaven—fresh, juicy, and dripping with savory butter. You see, many people from my generation saw it as kids, and kids don’t understand what a good movie is (which is why they get so excited about Kung Fu Panda). Now, the original Indiana Jones trilogy were great movies—even revolutionary. But because this new one doesn’t produce those same feelings of nostalgia, critics rip it to pieces. I’m not really sure what Spielberg and co. could have done to please Indy fans. Frankly, I think they came as close as they’re gonna get.

Now, my movie reviews are very formulaic; they begin with my opinion of the movie, which degenerates into a rant about movies and movie-watchers. Then comes the part where I pick out random things I liked and didn’t like about the movie, which is where we are at right now. I do have one bone to pick with Crystal Skull. Since when is an old geezer able to survive a nuclear blast at ground zero by hiding in a fridge? Especially when this conveniently lead-lined fridge is hurled like a tin can across the desert? I, for one, would have been turned to jelly; Harrison Ford emerges unscathed. Sadly, it is a common (and retarded) trend in movies today for the heroes to walk away, whistling cheerfully, after vicious physical punishment which should have left them maimed, crippled, and drooling—if not dead. No one survives a fall from a skyscraper uninjured, period.

I guess that kind of turned into a rant, too.

What did I like? Well, I liked the monkeys. I don’t know why. They just cracked me up for some reason. Also, the ants were pretty cool. And the heroes were fun to cheer for—even Shia LaBeouf. People seem to get annoyed by him, but he doesn’t usually bother me. I wonder why that is.

So the time has come to conclude this review. Here is my rating system:

• I would pay money to see it again ($$$$).
• I would see it again if someone gave me a free ticket ($$$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone gave me a free ticket ($$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone paid me to go ($).

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull scores…

$$$ (three dollars)

Not too shabby!

That, in a nutshell, is Prince Caspian. But if you want specifics, you’ll have to wait while I gear up for a little rant.

First, I want to start with a few positives. The new Narnia movies beat the pants off of the horrible old BBC movies. However, that’s a lot like saying a clothing store is “classier than K-Mart”—not a very high standard to meet. So I’ll add that the movies were also pretty well cast, have good special effects, and usually avoid being corny (…usually).

Sadly, the movies are also missing their soul. That’s because Aslan—the central figure of the books and the only character found in every book—is boring. In fact, he usually looks a little sleepy. He’s certainly not threatening. I guess this isn’t too surprising; the American church has become content with the friendly, safe God that C. S. Lewis despised. No wonder, then, that Aslan seems wise and kind but not scary. When he chewed up the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was more than a little disappointed that he popped up with a sanitized, toothy grin. Just once, I’d like to see blood dripping from Aslan’s teeth to remind us that he’s dangerous—you know, not a tame lion.

At a later date, I’d like to post more on how a lack of fear of the Lord is likely the defining sin of the American church. In this sense, the Narnia movies are symptomatic of a deep flaw in the way we look at God.

In the meantime, let’s dive into a few specifics before we wrap up the review. What did I like, and what didn’t I like?

If you haven’t seen the movie but you plan on seeing it, now would be a good time to stop reading.

I liked the acting, the darker battle scenes, Reepicheep the mouse (and all the mice, which were done very well), the trees fighting, and the occasional humorous quip.

I didn’t like the scenes blatantly ripped off of the black rider and river chase from the Lord of the Rings movies. I didn’t like the way the movie stretched to engineer awkward character conflicts. And while I’m usually pretty lenient regarding creative license in movie adaptations of books, I thought the whole attack on the Telmarine castle departed too far from the books (though it was still pretty good). Finally, I thought Susan smooching with Prince Caspian was unnecessary. In fact, what was up with that little hint of a love story? It definitely wasn’t there in the book, and it didn’t add anything to the movie. I will admit I’m still embittered by an utterly gratuitous sex scene which ruined a perfectly good novel I just finished reading.

Now, with that said, if you’ve read the books, I’d recommend seeing the movie. It definitely could have been worse. Speaking of which, it’s time to rate the movie, reducing years of creative work to a series of currency symbols:

• I would pay money to see it again ($$$$).
• I would see it again if someone gave me a free ticket ($$$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone gave me a free ticket ($$).
• I wouldn’t see it again even if someone paid me to go ($).

Prince Caspian scores a cheery $$¢ (two dollars and change). I grade hard, so that’s not a bad rating at all.